Journaling for the non-journaler [PBP]
No matter what path you follow, you will frequently encounter suggestions that you should journal your experiences.
When I started out, I wasn’t the journaling type. For years I refused to journal unless it was required for a class that I was doing, and then I would do the minimum required.
A few months before I started doing the ADF Dedicant’s Program, started having some very vivid dreams. To help me figure out what they all meant, I wrote them down in a journal. Around the same time, I started doing a daily morning practice, and I would write down what I did in my journal.
Initially, what I wrote in my journal was very basic … what exercises I did, how long I meditated, etc. Over time, my journaling has evolved and it’s now as much about how I’m feeling or odd things that have happened as it is about the exercises that I’ve done.
Periodically, I go back through my journal and I gain new insight on what was going on in my life and, with the value of the retrospective, I see patterns and learn more about myself. It’s also useful to try to understand the effects that the spells and rituals that I did have had. The learnings that I’ve had make me happy that I’ve been journaling.
Even if you’re not a journaling person, I really do recommend that you at least write down the things that you do. You can use your favorite computer program or a hand written journal, whatever you prefer. Just remember to include the dates, and times if they matter to you, to what you write.
You might be surprised and how you can work with a journal.